12/23/2014

today i went to eb games in the dufferin mall to buy a copy of borderlands 2 for ps3, since it’s supposed to be pretty good and also i’d read that there’s a "co-op" mode, which i thought might be a fun thing to do when my brother visits for christmas. while i was standing at the checkout counter waiting for the teenager to ring me through, he asked me if i’d played borderlands: the pre-sequel!, and i said no. he waited a beat, and then asked me if i planned to play it. at this point, for some reason, i thought the simplest thing to do to shut down this line of questioning would be to lie, so i gestured toward the game and said, "actually, this is for my brother." this seemed to disappoint the eb employee, who asked "have you played any of the borderlands series?" when i said no again, he asked with incredulity, "what kind of gamer are you?"

in retrospect, this may have been a rhetorical question, as in: how can you be a gamer if you’ve never played a borderlands game! but his tone suggested he really want to know, so, having already started to establish myself as a non-gamer who was buying this game he knew nothing about as a christmas present, i decided to take it to another level and said, "eh, i mostly just play sports games. kinda boring." having totally misrepresented myself at this point, i left the store feeling like a real jerk for sort of making it seem like i was too mature for these nerd games, rather than just admitting that i hadn’t gotten around to any borderlands games yet.